Investors checked into Premier Inn group Whitbread after an upbeat presentation in the City prompted a host of positive comment from analysts in attendance.

The company's shares rose 45p to £14.09, helping lift a market which was also enthused by better than expected US GDP figures. By the close the FTSE 100 rose 42.78 points to 5188.52, but the index still finished more than 100 points lower on the week.

In its City briefing, Whitbread was positive on the prospects of both Premier Inn and its Costa Coffee business. Jamie Rollo at Morgan Stanley called the company "one of the highest quality, fastest growing, yet cheapest quoted hotel companies." He added:

Premier Inn operates in an attractive market, is a high quality business, with a rapid roll-out programme, access to internal revenue drivers, and significantly undervalued real estate backing. Costa is ahead of its target to double earnings before interest and tax by 2012, and outlined plans to double its estate again to over 3,000 units (previous target 2,000), which makes eminent sense to us.

The only disappointment from the day was that there were no profit targets, but given Whitbread has been consistently beating expectations, the market shouldn't need too much spoon-feeding here.

Barclays Capital raised its earnings forecasts for the next four years after the meeting, and its target price for the shares from £16 to £17:

The group will deliver a trading update on March 4 – we expect a continuation of the positive trends witnessed in the third quarter. We continue to see upside risk to forecasts and Whitbread remains one of our top picks in the leisure sector.

After its recent falls the FTSE 100 was in positive territory all day, but the rise accelerated with the release of US GDP figures showing annualised growth in the fourth quarter of 5.7%, well above the 4.7% expected by the market. But analysts said the growth rate was unsustainable, and the figures were unlikely to push the US Federal Reserve into a sudden interest rate rise.

Among the banks, Barclays was 5.6p better at 270.55p as it fought back in a US lawsuit which claims it made excess profits from its purchase of Lehman Brother's US brokerage business. The bank said in a court filing it had acted in good faith and faced enormous risks in the transaction.But Royal Bank of Scotland fell 0.27p to 32.3p after its own US legal woes - an $8bn lawsuit from a Philadelphia real estate developer.

Among the mid-caps Rightmove climbed 27.5p to 528.5p. The company - whose shares were hit recently by fears that Google would move into the online estate agency market - has now done a deal with the search engine business. Google will now supply all maps for displaying properties on Rightmove. Some optimistic traders suggested the move could even lead to a bid from Google for the company.

Elsewhere Shanks jumped 6p to 127.5p on talk that private equity group Carlyle - which made a 135p a share approach in December - could come back with a 145p offer for the waste management company. Shanks was holding out for 150p but analysts believe 145p might be enough to win the day.

But support services group Connaught closed 39.7p lower at 320.2p after news that chief executive Mark Davies was leaving. Analyst Paul Checketts at Oriel Securities cut his rating on the business from buy to hold following the news. He said:

[Davies' resignation] really is a hammer blow as in his time with the City he has shown himself to be talented and visionary. As a consequence, we see this as enough of a negative to downgrade our recommendation. No real reason is given for Davies wanting to exit. The official line is "to seek new challenges elsewhere". Trading is said to continue to be in line with expectations. But until there is more certainty we'd tread carefully.

UK Coal slipped 4.5p to 61.5p after it cut production targets following continuing problems at its Daw Mill colliery, but Carillion climbed 0.6p to 298.8p as the company was selected as preferred bidder for the £370m Wolverhampton building schools for the future programme. Kevin Lapwood at Seymour Pierce said:

Clearly this is goods news but the future of building schools for the future is in doubt due to public spending pressures and we believe it will be severely cut under a Conservative government. We recently initiated coverage on Carillion with an ouperform rating, recognising that the company is essentially undervalued against its peers. Our sum of the parts valuation, which accounts for the mixed services and contracting profile, is 382p. However, even given the uncertain outlook for public sector spending and Carillion's exposure to construction markets, we believe a fair valuation is 350p. This puts the company on a PE of 9.4 times which is appropriate at this stage of the cycle.